I joined in 2006. It took me a couple of years to learn the ways of Debian Linux and Knoppmyth. With the help of those on this fine forum, I got KM working and recording off my Directv receiver, and I'm afraid to move to an unknown distro and break what I've got.

If I get a calm, comfortable moment in my life, I might try a migration to LinHES, but for right now, I plan to stick with R5.5.

I'm coming to the conclusion that it isn't really a LINHES-specific issue -- I suspect that mythtv usage in general is declining. I have no data to prove this but the situation at SchedulesDirect is worth looking at. SchedulesDirect is raising their fees because they are seeing a drop in membership rates, resulting in the need to amortize their fixed costs across a smaller number of people.

I suspect the decline reflects a decline in the use of mythtv, not just LINHES, for many different reasons: DRM; complexity of using it with cable & satellite; availability of inexpensive options from the service providers; etc.

Marc

Quote:

Membership fees going up on Sept 1

Despite our best efforts to keep our operating costs as close to zero as possible, a steady decline in membership since mid-2009 has finally pushed us to the point that the Board of Schedules Direct has determined that we must raise our annual membership fee. As of Sept 1, the annual membership fee will be raised to $25, with the 2-month trial membership adjusted accordingly to $6.

Though we don't know the exact cause of the decline, we suspect that it is a combination of the increasing prevalence of TV DRM which is incompatible with open source applications like MythTV, and alternate sources of guide data (most of which are neither legitimate nor legal).

Additionally, we are still waiting to hear back from the IRS about our application for 501c3/charitable tax exempt status, which we chose as a milestone before deciding whether or not we should accept donations, which would offset our operating costs and allow us to expand the kinds of support we offer to the community.

Please remember that your membership fee is not a purchase of guide data. We exist to provide support to the free and open source projects that you use and love, and encourage you to show your support by becoming members, even if you are not actively using the tools and information your SD membership provides

_________________Marc

The views expressed are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views of my employer.

I think people are drifting away due to the number of off the shelf PVR boxes available now.
I also think the move to Arch was a retrograde step, the Arch forums are less than helpful.
Mythbuntu seems to be alot more flexible in it's use and ability to use more hardware.

I had a slightly different, but equally problematic experience to Mattbatt's. In my case it installed and ran but I ran into other show-stopping issues. I don't recall exactly what they were, but I decided to stay with LINHES.

_________________Marc

The views expressed are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views of my employer.

I have to agree with bearwood in some respects in that alot more PVRs are about and coming down in price. I also agree with him on the Arch forum comment, I am not in a hurry to go back there.

However I disagree about it being a backward step by going to Arch and Mythbuntu's ability to use more hardware. Over the years I have seen Cesman add support for more and more hardware and he has even implemented SMOLT to allow the developers to see what hardware is being used.

Mythbuntu may be more flexible, but that is not what LinHES is about, flexibility. The design philosphy is that LinHES is an APPLIANCE designed to serve a single purpose.

Many people have extended LinHES over time, just ask mjl he uses it for many, many things and the forums here are absolutely fantastic. When it comes to forums I must say this is the most friendliest I have ever been involved in and I am proud to be associated (I would like to think so) with them.

True. Especially as talking about legal ways to make MythTV interact with pay TV smart cards is perceived negatively. Nowadays in Europe, most of the content we would be happy to record is broadcasted on pay-channels. Denying MythTV a native ability to deal with payTV subscriptions makes the beast declining by starvation.

marc.aronson wrote:

I suspect the decline reflects a decline in the use of mythtv, not just LINHES, for many different reasons: DRM; complexity of using it with cable & satellite; availability of inexpensive options from the service providers; etc.

You are right with DRM. DTCP-IP on DLNA, HDCP on HDMI, AACS on Blue-Ray, CI+ on DVB, the whole digital broadcasting world has been pushed into the jail. The very goal is to deny unlicensed appliances as MythTV access to the content they are designed to handle. Because it is a powerful jail breaker into the hands of the end-user. And freedom hurts rent seekers' business.

MythTV developers might have been advocate of another approach: it is legitimate for the user to make use of its own genuine pay TV smart cards with the backend, in order to get access to subscribed premium channels. But they do not want to put a toe into that, fearing of being accused to ease cardsharing. That's a pity, as solutions do exist which does not involve any card server, and would provide a second breathe to MythTV.

mediathreat wrote:

linhes could use a whip smart good looking website to help promote it and pull in new people.

My take is that these people are running themselves out of business by trying to cling to old models and pissing off and losing their customer base rather than adapting and growing. At this point they're just a step behind the newspaper companies, the iceman and the buggy whip makers on the slippery slope to oblivion.

I'm not sure what my favorite model would be, but simple pricing, high quality video, and being able to watch stuff when I want are key. also no obnoxious proprietary box, and if I'm paying for content, I won't put up with ads.

The price of cable service never more than mildly annoyed me, trying to requiring me to use a POS cable box, to watch stuff that was more ads than program, with water poor video quality, on their schedule rather than mine, and bundling services that were more than 90% crap, those were the deal breakers.

I'd happily pay $100+/month for a bandwidth and content service that only provided a good broadband network connection, current new and weather streams, and a large on demand streaming video catalog.

Well time for me to hang up my mythbox as well. I was using R5E50 (? really !?). It worked just great and my entire family loved having it. When the HD drive died though (after 4-5 years of service) I just didn't bother making a new box.

What I've replaced it with is a Panasonic Viera TV. The TV can stream netflix (which has taken over from watching recordings), and with DLNA it can play media off of a DLNA server (win7 desktop for now). I hope to change that to a NAS with RAID at some point, but other than missing timeshifting we really aren't giving up anything.

Anyway thanks for the fantastic distro and all the help I've received on this board on the R4/R5 lines (I never made the jump to LinHes) over time. MythTV and Knoppmyth/LinHes have been and are just terrific and I wish everyone the best.

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